Become Not Yours
by Thoughtful Constellations
Summary: After AoU, Clint & Natasha are left with the rest of the Avengers to pick up the pieces. As they learn more about their darkest fears, individually & in regards to each other, they must figure out what their fears mean in the long run for the both of them as people, as SHIELD agents, as Avengers, & most importantly, as everything they are to each. (Part IV of Compromised)
1. Aftermath

**Compromised Series Part IV!**

 **Just as a heads up, everything is AoU-compliant. That means the only difference from the movie is that Clint and Natasha are romantically involved (Laura Barton does not exist in this universe, and Bruce and Natasha are strictly friends.) So basically this series is now an AU series, but hey, what can you do. Hopefully y'all are still ok with that! This title is also taken from a line in Walt Whitman's poem, "To a Stranger."**

 **I'm going to TRY to update once a week every Monday, so look out for potential updates then if you want to keep up with this story! Mad shoutout to the amazing Camille aka nathanielbarton on Tumblr for being my beta! Always kicking my ass into shape.**

 **Song for the chapter: "Kids Aren't Alright" - Fall Out Boy**

 **Let me know what you think! I hope you guys like the, ahem, creative license I have taken. Please, please, please let me know =)**

 **Enjoy! =)**

* * *

"And you're sure about this?" Natasha had asked. "You're _sure_ about doing this? It's our last safe place in the world, Clint."

"I'm sure," he'd replied, his blue eyes clear and confident, his mind still in one piece, the one thing he had over Natasha in that moment. "We need somewhere to go…we need to lie low. I'm sure."

"Clint…"

"If you say no, I'll find somewhere else. I just need the word."

"No, Clint…no…let's just do it. You're right. We don't have anywhere else."

"And _you're_ sure about this?"

"Count me in."

And so Clint had shown the Avengers the last safe place he and Natasha had been able to keep for themselves. He'd let them in and given them the last piece of himself he had to offer, the last piece Natasha had to offer. If she'd told him no, he would have listened. He would have given up some other safe house, but she'd said ok. Even in her not-quite-there state, she'd said ok, and he'd trusted her.

* * *

Natasha glanced up from her paperwork and looked over at Clint. "I know you're avoiding finishing those forms. They're not going to finish themselves."

"If I keep telling myself yeah, then they will," he retorted. Natasha suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, but she shrugged as she finished signing off on the form she was currently attacking. "Shouldn't you be off doing something else, anyway?"

"If by something else you mean helping train Wanda, then no." Natasha moved the finished form off to the side and started on the next one. "She's been doing well over the past few days. I thought she deserved a break."

"She doesn't like taking breaks," Clint pointed out.

She glanced up again, her green eyes finding his face immediately. "Who does that sound like?"

"Not fair."

"Completely fair. It's because of your workaholic attitude that Fury even sent us off to Italy after the Battle of New York."

"Workaholic? You're the one filling out your 900th form, and I'm the one who's a workaholic?" Clint leaned forward again, narrowing his eyes at her, even though the look on his face was playful and anything but confrontational. "Want to run that by me again, Romanoff?"

"No. I'm busy." She skimmed over the rest of the form and then lifted a hand to her forehead, rubbing just a little bit. Instantly, Clint noticed the motion, and he paused.

"Nat?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"You ok?"

"Yeah. Just a headache."

"You've had those a lot recently."

Natasha shrugged again and opened her eyes, a tiny frown playing across her mouth. "We've had a shitty past couple of days. Couple of weeks. Everything's just kind of been shitty."

"Understatement of the century."

"Try the _millennium_. Banner's gone, Pietro's dead, Stark's off doing God knows what. Thor…Thor's just always doing his own thing, and then there's the rest of the world that we just kind of destroyed in the process of trying to save it from an army of well-meaning but very childish, very petty tin men."

"Technically it was one very powerful tin man who put his brain in all the other tin men, but I know what you were getting at," Clint said as Natasha shot him a look. He twisted a bit in his swivel chair. "We should take a few days off."

"Yeah, and go where?" she countered. "The farm? That's the first place anyone would think to look for us now that they know where it is," Natasha replied. Clint opened his mouth to respond, guilt already starting to set in across his face, and she shook her head. "And I don't blame you for that. Not at all. We've had this conversation. I'm just saying that our safe house isn't quite as safe as it was. You know?"

"Then another safe house."

"Our safe house that was destroyed in D.C. after HYDRA fucked us over?" she asked steadily. "Our safe houses all over the world that were destroyed? We only have a handful left, Clint. It won't be long until someone finds those and destroys them, too. All that information's been leaked out there…just a matter of time."

"Your headaches don't look very good."

"Pain never feels good, Clint."

Clint sighed, knowing he lost the argument, and he lifted his hands up. "I can't win. Ever. I don't know why I'm even surprised anymore."

"Surprised by what?" Steve appeared in the doorway and crossed farther into the room towards the two former agents. "I miss anything exciting, or is this just another lovers' quarrel?"

"It's disgusting that you refer to us as lovers," Clint deadpanned, snorting a little as he rolled his eyes.

"Show me the lie, and I'll show you an apology," Steve drily remarked.

"How's everything going?" Natasha asked as she looked up from her form. Squinting her eyes against the bright fluorescents, she focused as best as she could on Steve's face.

"In general, with the team, or are you talking about something else entirely?" Steve asked. Natasha lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side.

"Do I even need to clarify?"

"Everything's all right, Sam and Rhodey spent roughly seven minutes arguing over their individual engine power, and no one's seen or heard anything about Bucky. That answer your question?"

"And then some," Natasha replied. Her eyes flicked back towards the doorway. "Any word from Fury and Hill yet?"

"Not yet. Expecting anything from them?"

"Not really. They just haven't been around very much since we officially set up shop here."

"What do you mean?" Steve folded his arms over his chest and frowned a little at her.

"Nothing. They're just…not here. I'm curious. Aren't you curious? Don't you ever want to know what's going on beneath the surface? Or are Clint and I the only ones who want to know?" Natasha asked.

"Could just be our natural spy instincts," Clint added, his sharp eyes turning up towards Steve.

"Well." Steve shrugged with a dry smile. "There's a reason I keep you two around."

Natasha laughed and shook her head, genuinely appreciating the joke. "As if you can control us. Please, Rogers."

"We're all equals in this. Always." Steve leaned back against the side of one of the desks and looked back and forth between them. "So you're all…ok after everything that happened?"

"Are you asking me if I still have flashbacks to my horrific childhood?" Natasha asked, her voice just as dry as his. Clint shot her a questioning look, but if she saw it—she did—she didn't pay him any attention.

Steve shrugged a little as he looked at her with his own cool blue eyes. "Yes. I guess that's essentially what I'm asking."

"Then yes. I am ok. One hundred percent." Natasha pushed the paperwork away from her and fought the urge to rub her head again. The headache was back and dulling out her extra sharp senses, things she couldn't afford to go too long without. "What'd you even see, Rogers?"

Steve's mouth curved upwards into another smile, and he shook his head just once. "Funny, Romanoff. Funny."

Before anyone could reply, an agent stuck her head into the room. "Captain Rogers, you're needed downstairs for a quick consulting question. Hill's on the line."

Steve couldn't see Natasha as she flashed a look in Clint's direction, the both of them exchanging looks as they noticed the fact that Hill was calling in to Steve, not to either of them. She looked up at Steve and smiled as he nodded towards them as his way of saying good-bye. "Saved by the bell, right?"

"For now," she replied, and just like that, Steve was gone. Natasha went still for a few moments as she waited for him to get far enough away. Then she turned back to Clint with curiosity on her face. "What do you think?"

"I think Hill's probably up to no good. You know how she is. Doing secret spy stuff. Like always."

"No." Natasha scooted forward in her chair a little bit more. "Steve. What do you think he saw when Wanda fucked with his head?"

"Think that's really something we should talk about?" Clint asked, his face careful as he looked back at her. "Whatever he saw…it was horrible, right? You said you saw your childhood…you saw the Red Room. Whatever Wanda showed him…"

Natasha shifted her jaw to the side, and she nodded. "You don't want to know?"

He lifted his hands and looked away, as if trying to hide from her a little bit. "Nat, that ain't my business."

She shrugged a little bit, knowing he was right but not wanting to admit it. "Well. I guess I don't want everyone knowing my deep, dark secrets, either. So I don't blame him for not wanting to share with the rest of the class."

"To be fair, you didn't really tell him what you saw, either," Clint said, nodding towards the doorway Steve had just walked out a few moments ago. "All you said was that it was something to do with your childhood in the Red Room. Nothing more, nothing less."

"We see our deepest fears," Natasha murmured. Her face grew a little distant, and then she looked at Clint. "The other day Wanda said that that was what she showed us. Our deepest fears. Mine was the Red Room."

"That doesn't surprise me," Clint replied, his voice and his face soft as he looked at her. She frowned at that and pressed her lips slightly together, but she didn't respond. At her silence, he leaned forward. "Nat?"

"I should be over it by now, you know? The Red Room? I shouldn't still be scared of it. I'm an adult now. What happened in the Red Room is a part of the past. And even though I've struggled with what I did…the things I did as part of the job…I guess that that's never really gone away." Natasha shook some of her red hair out of her face, and she folded her arms over her chest as if to protect what small pieces of herself she could find left.

"I didn't need Wanda to get in my head to remind me of my worst fear," Clint said with an expressionless face. "But I can see how that'd shake you up. I totally understand it."

"What would she have shown you?" Natasha asked.

Clint smiled and shook his head, his expression still as unreadable and blank as before. "You know, Nat."

"Do I?"

"You always have."

And even though Natasha didn't know, she had a feeling he was right.

* * *

A suit of armor around the world.

Around the world.

Natasha had never fully believed that that could be done. Even when she'd been a brand new agent at SHIELD, eager to prove herself and show that she was worthy, deserving of her rank, she hadn't ever truly believed that that could be possible. Of course, she hadn't known that this is what would eventually happen—that Tony Stark would ultimately create that shield of armor and wind up nearly blowing the world to bits because of it.

Back when she'd first joined SHIELD, Stark had still been CEO of Stark Industries. He'd still been a strong believer in weapons and the idea that with enough weapons, he could save the world from destroying itself. He'd still had his own bones forming his sternum, and Afghanistan was just a future concept waiting to happen but never foreseen. Back when she'd first joined SHIELD, she never would have believed that a man in a suit of armor could even exist, let alone a suit of armor around the world.

She didn't hate Tony's sentiment, nor could she blame him for it. If she thought she could have done anything to possibly protect the innocent people on this planet, she knew she would have been the first in line to sign up for it. But she was realistic. She knew she couldn't give the world that kind of protection. No matter how many suits of armor, how many new uniform upgrades, how many fancy gadgets and billions of dollars spent on making her battle staves light up at exactly the right moment, she knew she couldn't give the world the protection she so wished she could.

But where she differed so much from the rest of the Avengers was that she maintained her realism. She knew her limits, and she accepted them. But people like Stark, Banner, and even Thor from time to time didn't always know them. If she had to guess, Steve's willingness to accept what he couldn't change was one of the reasons why they got along so well. He accepted what he couldn't change, but he didn't let that acceptance take away his motivation or ruin whatever it was that made him an Avenger. He knew he couldn't change the world, but he still continued to try. She knew she couldn't change the world, either, but she was damn well going to keep trying. If not for the rest of the people who stood a chance of dying, for the people she'd let die and had even killed with her own hands in the past.

At this point, however, she would have just been happy with a suit of armor around her home. And whether that home was Clint or her now compromised farmhouse with him, she didn't know. She just knew that if she could keep at least one thing safe, she would desperately try to. And if the only thing she could keep safe was Clint, she'd do it.

"Natasha."

Natasha hid the shock she felt, and she turned over her shoulder to look at Steve. He must have entered the room when she wasn't paying attention, but now that she saw him, she wondered how she ever could have missed his entrance.

"Hey," she greeted. "Anything going on?"

"I could ask you the same," he returned, nodding in her direction. "Been copying those papers for a long time."

She glanced down at the machine and saw far too many copies of the blank accident report form she'd only needed three of, but she just shrugged it off, refusing to let him know he'd caught her in an off moment. "Never hurts to have too many. Seems like we'll be filling them out a lot more these days, anyway. What with all the accidents SHIELD's causing left and right."

"Are we even really SHIELD anymore?" Steve asked, lifting his eyebrows in that way only he had of smirking.

"Good question," she conceded. "Whatever we are, though, it looks like the rest of the world is getting pissed at us, and they're pinning it on SHIELD. SHIELD and the Avengers seem to kind of go hand in hand in this current day and age."

"You sure we need that many copies?" Steve's blue eyes flicked down to the growing stack of papers that were coming out of the copier, and even though Natasha was inwardly groaning at her own mistake, she just smiled.

"Yes. We'll be needing many more of these to come."

"You sound sure of it."

"Look at what we just came through, Steve." She lifted her hand and gestured vaguely towards the giant glass window on the opposite side of the room. Outside the window was a peaceful view of a bunch of peaceful trees. Peaceful trees and peaceful grass and the peaceful clear day they'd been lucky enough to get. A poor consolation for the past week they'd had, but if a clear day was one of the few good—yet strangely ironic—things currently going on in Natasha's life, she was more than willing to take it. "Everything that happened out there? Everything we _did_ out there? Ultron? Wakanda? Sokovia? Those weren't just accidents. Whether we're SHIELD or the Avengers, we created a whole bunch of accidents."

"Is that what they were?" Steve asked, his mouth doing that smirk thing again. Natasha returned the glance and shook her head.

"No. And I think you know that, too."

Reluctantly, he nodded, and his face slipped back into seriousness. "Unfortunately, I do."

Natasha nodded to show she'd heard him, and she glanced back down at the papers, wondering how many she'd managed to print out now but still unwilling to hit Cancel on the copier. If she canceled the order, Steve would know she'd made a mistake, and with Clint already on her about her headaches, she didn't want Steve on her, either.

"How's Barton doing with the whole Maximoff thing?" Steve asked, his voice quieter as he stepped in closer. Natasha looked back up at him and paused while she tried to think of the best way to answer. How was Clint after one of the young people he'd somewhat taken under his wing died? How was he doing? She didn't quite know how to answer that question without betraying any part of Clint's confidence but also without lying.

"He's handling it as best he can," she answered. She purposefully left out mentions of how he hadn't slept at all that first night after Ultron had officially been defeated. She purposefully left out any descriptions of how he'd started getting twitchy in his sleep again, something he only did whenever he was distressed. She purposefully left out as many details as she could get away with.

"So not well," Steve finished for her.

"Not the worst he's ever been but certainly not the greatest." She held his gaze and tilted her head to the side. "He's never been great at handling deaths."

"That one of the reasons why he didn't kill you?" Steve asked, his tone cautious but also genuine. Natasha smiled and tutted her tongue at him as she shook her head.

"Whoa, Captain. Someone's being awfully presumptuous."

"No harm meant. Just curious." Steve folded his arms over his chest, and his face became less serious and more carefree. "I don't even know that much about you and Barton. I mean, I know all the facts. Everything that was released when you dumped SHIELD's info on the net to expose HYDRA, but I don't know the stuff that matters."

"Are you asking for a love story, Rogers?" she asked, bringing back that same dry tone she'd used with him earlier.

"Maybe."

"Then you'll have to keep waiting because you're not getting it."

"You're no fun."

"Said Captain America."

Steve rolled his eyes and smirked a little. "Ok. Fair enough. Anyway, after all this, I actually came here on official business."

"Official Avengers business?" She watched the copier shoot out paper after paper after paper, and she tried not to think about how many trees had been killed for her little fuck up and overflow of pride.

"No."

Now she looked up, curious. He had her full attention, and he knew he did by the way his gaze turned less official, less Captain America, and became more like Steve Rogers, the man who'd taken down HYDRA. Steve Rogers, the man she trusted. Steve Rogers, her friend.

"I have a lead on Bucky."

She didn't bother hiding her surprised expression. "You do?"

"Yeah. Not an official guarantee but enough of one to make me want to sniff it out."

"And you're here because…"

"I want you and Sam to come with me." His eyes trailed over to the copier, and he nodded. "If you're not too busy with the copier."

Finally, she hit Cancel on the copier, and she turned and faced him head on. "How long do I have to gear up?"

"Four hours."

"Count me in."


	2. Searches

**Ok, I know I skipped last week's update, but I'm trying! Thanks for always being patient with me and for holding out =)**

 **Mad shoutout as always to Camille for betaing for me! Camille's also been getting some weird messages about her betaing this, so I'd like to ask whoever's doing that to please stop. If you have any questions about the fic, why I'm using a beta etc., you can always ask me! (I'm much better about replying on Tumblr, though, so I would highly suggest asking me there instead of here. I have a bunch of messages to answer here, and I'm so behind on them.)**

 **Song for this chapter: "Relator" - Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson.**

 **As always, let me know your thoughts!**

 **Enjoy! =)**

* * *

Chapter 2

Clint noticed right away that something was up as soon as Natasha swept back into the room, her arms full of extra forms. The second he looked at the mass stack of papers she carried against her chest, he realized she'd made far, _far_ too many copies, and just as he was about to say something, he noticed her face. Natasha always got this expression whenever she switched into mission mode—it wasn't something many other people noticed, but Clint with his sharp eyes and knowing mind caught it every single time.

"Nat?" he asked curiously.

"I made too many copies," she answered as she set them down on the desk she'd spent the past few days occupying. "Wasn't paying attention when I put the number in."

"What's going on? You've got your game face on." He ignored her statement about the papers and nodded in her direction, his eyes still glued to her face.

"Going out into the field," she replied. "Steve got a lead on Barnes and asked Sam and me to go with him."

Clint nodded. "Sounds good. Think this'll be successful?"

Natasha's mouth quirked up into a smirk, and she paused from rummaging through her duffel bag underneath the desk to shoot him an amused glance. "Who knows? With Barnes and these leads we've been getting…we could either find him, or we could be barking at our own asses again."

"Speaking of barking at our own asses, Noelle seems to be enjoying the new apartment," Clint pointed out, referring to the cat they'd had the past few years. Natasha smiled briefly but went back to digging in her duffel bag as she looked for something that was probably at the very bottom of the bag.

"She's so used to being picked up and moved all over the place. Not that big of a deal for her anymore."

"I read a study that said cats are more attached to places than people."

"You think Noelle would prefer to stay in the original apartment we brought her home to rather than stay with us?"

"Yes."

"Then you don't know cats at all, Barton." Natasha held up the extra pair of gloves she'd been searching for, a look of triumph on her face, and she stood back up. "I don't know how long I'll be gone. Think you'll be able to hold down the fort here?"

Clint snorted and rolled his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. He linked his fingers back behind his head, and he surveyed her with lazy blue eyes. "Please. Ye of such little faith. I'll be able to run this place just fine."

"Rhodey will be here, the Vision is…I don't know what he's doing or what he's up to, honestly, and Wanda will be here, too. Play nice, ok?" Natasha's eyes flicked down to his mouth and then back up the way they always did whenever she wanted to kiss him but didn't want to cross the lines at work.

"Scout's honor."

And as Natasha stood up to leave, she found it no harder to leave him than she usually did. That was their life. Their lives were made up of leaving each other with vague hints and muddy details, most of their hints and details being lies, anyway. She was used to the classified nature of their relationship together, and she knew Clint was, too. But after SHIELD had fallen, after SHIELD had collapsed, and every single classified file had become more public than a celebrity wedding, classified had lost every sense of the word for the both of them.

"Try not to miss me too much," Clint quipped, his eyes lingering a little bit longer than usual.

"I'll try." She nodded back towards him. "Don't mess with the junior agents."

"I'll try."

She smiled. "I know you do."

* * *

In the allotted amount of time, Natasha was able to take care of everything she needed to in order to be ready for the mission. "Mission" didn't feel the right word to call it. It wasn't a _mission_ per se—no one was giving Steve orders, and no one sure as hell was giving _her_ orders. Steve was doing this because he felt he needed to, and Natasha was doing it because Steve asked her, too, and he was her friend.

"Romanoff in the house," Sam remarked when she crossed into the hangar where the quinjet was. "Team's back together again, huh?"

"Something like it." She gave him a dry smile and glanced around the rest of the large hangar. "Where's Rogers? Keeping us waiting?"

"Guess so. Clearly doesn't know about being punctual. Which is funny since he's probably the fastest man on Earth." Sam folded his arms over his chest and squinted as he looked around, too, though Natasha got the feeling that he was doing it just so she didn't feel quite so alone in the gesture. She didn't know why, but she liked that part about Sam. He always seemed to be standing right beside her, never a step ahead or pretending to fall a few back so she felt like she was an equal. He stood beside her, so they really and truly _were_ equals.

"Probably want to take that back," she replied, her smirk still present. "I have a few members on the former index of SHIELD who could probably outrace Steve without even breaking a sweat."

Impressed, Sam lifted his eyebrows and looked directly at her. "Really? That's what the index is?"

"More or less," Natasha answered with a nod. "Generally people with unexplained powers get put on the index. People SHIELD needed to watch out for. But I guess since there isn't much SHIELD left, there probably isn't much of an index left."

"Would the Maximoff girl be considered index-worthy?" Sam asked curiously.

Natasha nodded again, her eyes still scanning for Steve. "She and her brother were both already flagged as interesting. Now that she's here and one of us, she would have continued to be one of us but still would have been logged into the index. Just for someone to look out for."

"Speaking of someone to look out for." Sam nodded in the direction Steve was coming from, and Natasha looked over her shoulder to find Steve in his tactical suit walking towards them. He had his shield strapped to his back and something that looked like a flash drive in his hand, signifying that he was ready for their mission, assignment, whatever the hell it was they were doing. "Nice of you to show up."

"I was a little busy." Steve held the flash drive up for Sam to see. "Gathering intel so we don't go in blind."

"We've done that a little too much lately, so thank God for preparation," Natasha spoke up. Her eyes followed Steve, studying him as he nodded towards the quinjet as their signal to board it, and she boarded it beside both him and Sam. "So. You going to debrief us, Captain?"

"You and I have already been there," Steve commented, crossing towards the controls.

"Uhn uhn," Sam spoke up when he saw that Steve was preparing to take the spot of pilot. He shook his head and followed after the tall super soldier. "That's my area of expertise. Out of all three of us, I think I'm the most experienced pilot here."

Natasha lifted her red eyebrows and glanced over at Steve as he glanced back at her. "I'll fight you for that title, Wilson."

"Oh, yeah, Black Widow?" Sam grinned and leaned against the back of the pilot's seat. "You want to be my co-pilot, and we'll see who the better flier is?"

"Oh, boy," Steve sighed while Natasha tilted her head to the side. She never really liked co-piloting for people unless it was for Clint, Maria, Bobbi Morse, or a few other select agents, but she looked at Sam and saw the challenge in his face.

"Ok," she said. "You're on." She crossed towards the co-pilot seat and switched on her controls while Sam settled into his own seat to set up, too. Steve stood between the both of them and watched.

"This is going to be a nightmare," he remarked.

"Make sure you video me being a better pilot," Sam said, and Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Just debrief us, Cap," she said. Behind her, she heard Steve uncap the flash drive, and then he plugged it into the USB up by the front. A hologram across the windshield of the quinjet immediately lit up along with the username and password requirements that came with all SHIELD-classified files.

"Rogers, Steven G.," Steve said in his Captain voice. Natasha grabbed the co-pilot headset and slipped it around her neck. She knew she'd have to adjust it whenever she put them on over her ears, but right now, she wanted to hear what their mission was about.

"Access granted," the smooth voice of the AI replied. Suddenly, Natasha saw all kinds of pictures and documents flash across the glass and then settle into a messy hologram pile.

"This is so organized," she deadpanned.

He shrugged, half-hearted. "I was in a hurry." Leaning forward, he pressed a picture and used both hands to blow it up. "This was taken early this morning outside Camp Lehigh. Motion-detector camera."

Natasha leaned back in her seat and stared up at the picture with wide eyes. Steve hadn't been kidding—she knew this place. She'd gone there before with him back during the events of the HYDRA takeover. She'd been present when Steve had discovered that Arnim Zola had been preserved in the form of computers in the basement of his old Army camp, and she'd been present when SHIELD—disguised by HYDRA—had tried to bomb the hell out of the both of them. As she looked at the picture, she remembered everything she'd gone through, everything that had happened not so long ago.

She remembered how nervous she'd been about Clint that whole time. She'd known that he'd been out of the country on a mission, but that hadn't meant anything. HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD so deeply that had they genuinely wanted to harm him, they could have easily found him. God, HYDRA had had agents in all of SHIELD's locations. It was a wonder Clint hadn't been harmed on his mission, but she didn't spend a lot of time asking why. She knew better than to look gift horses in the mouth, so she didn't dare peek into this one's throat.

"Recognize it?" Steve asked. She smirked a little and shrugged.

"How could I forget it?"

"What is this place?" Sam frowned, his brown eyes skimming over the screen. He caught a small note off to the side. "Camp Lehigh. That's…that's where you were trained, Cap?"

"Yes." Steve made the picture smaller and brought up another file. Bucky's file. "This was the last place Bucky saw in the States. Before he shipped off to Europe."

"Back when he was still Barnes," Natasha said. Steve nodded in agreement.

"Back before HYDRA got their hands on him. If he went there…there's a chance he remembers that place."

"What if he doesn't?" Sam asked. "You said that that camp was where they were keeping the brain of that one dead guy, right? Zola?"

"Technically, it was his mind uploaded onto a shit ton of computers, but dead guy brain works," Natasha answered, shrugging. "But yeah, Camp Lehigh was where all of that was located."

"So what if Barnes is going back there for a reason? Not because he remembers it but because…you know…I'm guessing that since HYDRA kept a high tech scientist locked away there, that was a pretty important HYDRA spot. And he's been hijacked by HYDRA for all these years," Sam said. He glanced cautiously towards Steve, clearly trying to word his suggestion in a careful way that wouldn't put Steve on the defense.

"What if he's still HYDRA and is acting on HYDRA orders?" Steve asked, his voice dull.

Sam shrugged but didn't say anything while Natasha stared hard at the captain's face.

Slowly, Steve shook his head. "It's a thought. But I don't think so. I think there's a chance he remembers. I know he knew me. Back on the helicarrier…I know he did."

"Memories don't come racing back immediately," Natasha murmured.

She felt Steve's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. He only knew the bare minimum of her past. Even though she'd leaked her own damn files to the Internet, he hadn't read them. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. Maybe it was in the way that he looked at her, so steady and unwavering, the farthest possible thing from blaming her. Maybe it was how he didn't treat her like a gentle, damaged bird. Maybe it wasn't anything differently he did at all. But Natasha knew he hadn't looked, and for that, she gave him silent thanks.

But she was right. From personal experience, she knew that memories didn't come back all at once; they trickled in. They flashed. They exploded. They leaked. They didn't just come back because one familiar line triggered something in someone's head. They came back whenever they did, and sometimes they didn't come back at all.

Natasha was never under any false illusions about her past. She'd always been honest with herself, as had everyone else she'd ever worked with. Out of everyone else she knew, she was the most honest about what had happened to her as a part of the Red Room, as a part of the KGB. Even so, her memories weren't completely there. She'd been able to shake most of them free, but she knew there were memories she didn't have and would most likely never have again. Or at least she'd thought that. Until Wanda.

She had known about her graduation ceremony. Even after she'd graduated, she'd remembered it and known that it'd happened. But she hadn't been able to remember it. She remembered the before, and she remembered the after, and years later, she'd learned that that was what happened to protect minds from cracking after traumatic events. Bits and pieces lingered in her mind, but the actual event had consistently remained buried beneath a fog she'd been happy to let lie over her view line to the past.

Then she'd run into Wanda, and Wanda had sent red tendrils into her head, and Natasha had remembered everything. She remembered the pain, the fear, the smell of blood. She remembered it all. Swallowing, she tried to force the memory from her head as she sat there in the quinjet thinking about all of this. Why she'd chosen now to deal with issues she'd been pushing out of her head as forcefully as she pushed her memories out she had no idea, but she was thinking dangerous things, and she couldn't afford to.

"That's true," she realized Sam was saying.

"I know it's true," Steve agreed. "I just don't think Buck's there for HYDRA business. If he were, he wouldn't have disappeared."

"No one has any idea where he is," Natasha said. "Not even our inside sources within HYDRA."

"So you have inside sources inside HYDRA and haven't told me?" Sam asked, looking mildly surprised. He looked back and forth between their faces and shook his head. "I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore. I should be used to this, shouldn't I? Yeah. I should be used to this."

"It's been close to a year since the fall of SHIELD," Steve said. He looked over at Natasha. "Things have changed."

"Yes," she replied without looking away, her thoughts everywhere but laser-focused all at once. "They have."

* * *

"Agent Barton?"

Clint looked up from his bow that he'd just started cleaning, and he saw Wanda Maximoff standing in the doorway. She looked nervous and unsure of herself, but she didn't look completely out of place, either. Once she saw she had his attention, she took a few steps forward.

"Hey," he greeted. "Clint, by the way. You can call me Clint."

"Natasha said that that was your name," Wanda replied, her voice soft and still a little hesitant. Her eyes darted to the bow, and she pointed towards it with a loose hand that was more like a gesture than an actual point. "Your bow. It is important to you?"

"Yes." Clint glanced back at his bow and found himself smiling a little as he looked at it. "It's very important to me. It's my weapon of choice and my most trusted friend."

"You can use other weapons, though?" She crossed a little closer.

"Yeah, in order to be a SHIELD agent, you have to be well-versed in all kinds of weapons. I know how to use more than I could list off the top of my head, honestly." He shrugged a little and looked back at her, curious as to what she was getting at.

"Your arrows." She pointed towards his quiver now. "Do you make them?"

"I'm pretty much the person in charge of designing all of them, but Stark or someone else makes them." He narrowed his eyes just a little bit out of deepened curiosity. "Why?"

"How did you get that one arrow to do that thing?" She tapped her forehead, and Clint suddenly realized that she was talking about the mind-warping arrow he'd used on her the first time she'd attacked the team. He wasn't sure if he should feel embarrassed or matter of fact about it, but he cleared his throat and shifted his quiver a little.

"It's kind of an electric shock more than anything," he said. "I got the idea after I went through my own little bout of mind control."

"You didn't want it to happen again," Wanda replied, finishing sentence for him. Clint stared at her with cool eyes, and after a few silent moments, he nodded.

"You could say that," he admitted.

Wanda sat down on the end of the bench on the opposite side of him, and she frowned a little. "Where is Natasha?"

"She was called on a mission. She should back soon, though." Clint lowered his bow without taking his eyes off of her. He didn't distrust her, but he wasn't entirely sure he trusted her, either. If anything, she reminded him of a kid sister he'd never had, and he wasn't sure how to handle a kid sister.

"You are important to Natasha," Wanda said suddenly. Clint noticed that she hadn't asked him—she'd stated it—and when he paused, he found that she was looking at him straight on without that same nervousness and apprehension she'd had in her eyes earlier. "I saw it in her head. When I showed her her fears. I saw you there."

Clint paused for another few moments. Natasha hadn't told him that. Why hadn't she told him? That seemed like the kind of thing she wouldn't forget to share with him, and he knew Natasha—she didn't forget to share things. Frowning, he tilted his head to the side just a bit. "You saw me?"

"Flashback. A memory. To the Battle of New York." She pointed towards his quiver again. "She was the one who saved you from the ice god."

"Technically, he's a Frost Giant," Clint blithely corrected. When Wanda showed no reaction, he nodded a little. "Yeah. She was the one who got him out of my head. Nat and I have been partners for years."

"Your feelings…her feelings. They extend beyond partners," Wanda said, again her words being the farthest thing from a question. "You and Natasha are not just partners, Agent Barton."

"Clint," he corrected. "And…no. She's my best friend in the whole world."

At that, Wanda's face grew a little distant, and she looked out the massive window in front of her to where the rest of the world lay outside. Clint didn't think she was going to answer, and honestly, he was ok with that. He never felt the need for idle talk whenever he was with someone, and he was comfortable with sitting in silence with Wanda Maximoff, as much of a stranger as she was to him, but after a few moments, she spoke again. "You are lucky. She loves you deeply."

"I am," Clint quietly agreed.

"She's a good teacher."

Now he smiled a little. "She's that, too."

"She's been teaching me basic self-defense. Things on how to defend myself if anyone attacks me," Wanda said, her face a little funny now. "In case anyone gets around what I can do."

"How's that going?"

"Not my best work."

Finally, she smiled. It wasn't a huge smile, but it was still a smile. God, in a way, looking at her was a little like looking at Natasha when Natasha had first come into SHIELD. She hadn't been very big on smiling, and she'd been full of hesitant questions, too. The difference was that Natasha had wound up becoming such a key part of who Clint was that he couldn't imagine breathing in a world where Natasha didn't exist, and Wanda would wind up becoming a team member whom he trusted and would trust to have his back. Hell, she already was a team member—she'd helped take down Ultron. She was a full-fledged Avenger as far as he was concerned. "But I'm learning."

"Well, that's what's important," Clint offered up, which got a shrug from her. Her eyes went back to the bow.

"So Natasha isn't here," she said. "But I want to learn more. Teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow."

Clint followed her gaze to the bow and then back at her. "You sure about that?"

"No. But I want to learn." She paused for half a second. "I need something to do. I need something to keep my mind busy."

And then Clint knew. He suddenly understood why she was there, why she was asking him questions and talking to him. And he didn't blame her. God, he couldn't.

"Ok," he said. "Well…bows aren't really easy."

"For you they are," she countered.

"No. Not really. Not always."

She looked back at his face, her dark brown eyes curious and serious all at the same time. "Nothing ever is."

Understanding passed between them, and Clint handed her his bow. "Alright, you're going to want to get into a comfortable stance. A lot of your power comes from your stance."

He kept his voice calm and patient, speaking to Wanda the same way he'd speak to any other agent learning how to handle a bow and arrow. And as he helped teach her how to use a weapon they both knew she'd most likely never use or feel the need to pick up after this lesson, he thought back to what she'd said earlier about him showing up in the vision she'd given Natasha. Natasha hadn't told him about that part, just the bit about the Red Room. But the more he thought about it, the more he didn't blame her. Before she'd left, he'd told her that she knew what his darkest fear was, and he still believed it. She knew. However, he thought he'd known what hers was—he thought he'd known with the Red Room and everything that had happened to her, but after his talk with Wanda, after listening to her tell him about how he related to Natasha instead of ask, he realized he'd been wrong about Natasha's darkest fear.

But now he knew. God, he knew.


	3. Landing

**Oh no, I realized I forgot to do my shoutouts for reviewers! Shoutouts to YAS, Aubrey Etta, , Just Another Netflixer, isikiddo, MoonIce20408, piccolover22, Maite Sanchez, Sara, Guest, agentromanoffblackwidow, so-lovely-and-i, kamarooka, pengineer, MaddieFayeth96, CreativeDreamer98, Guest, Noraye92, justadream666z, Guest, pinoychick143, dreamhaunter06, amy. .9, Mokikaitlyn, Lily, and Guest for reviewing!**

 **I've had some questions about my OC stories. Yes, I deleted them. I'm so sorry for those of you who read them and liked them, but I thank y'all for reading them and enjoying them while they were still up!**

 **Song for the chapter: "Help I'm Alive" - Metric**

 **Let me know what you think!**

 **Enjoy! =)**

* * *

Chapter 3

After a few hours of archery lessons, both Wanda and Clint decided that maybe archery wasn't Wanda's strength. Neither of them wanted to say out loud what her real strength was because they both knew _exactly_ where her real power lay, but they quietly laughed and called their training session a successful bust for the day. When Wanda left, an awkward but not necessarily uncomfortable tension still between them, he spent the rest of his day finishing his paperwork and starting Natasha's paperwork. She was gone, and she'd fall behind, so he figured he might as well start it for her.

He could picture Natasha's reaction already when she came back. Between the two of them, she was the paperwork person. She hated filling out the endless forms the same way he did, but she was the motivator, the one who always found some way to make it fun. Most of the time she set a goal for the end. If they both finished their paperwork on time, they could swing by that Chinese place they both really liked and maybe even go crazy and splurge on a giant bottle of soda. Neither he nor Natasha liked soda all that much, but having it for a goal at the end of a long day of papers and pens and the smell of ink drying was enough to get them to work harder.

Sometimes Natasha made special playlists to quietly play while they did paperwork. Sometimes she even went so far as to let him make a playlist. Even though she always fought him on it, she liked the music he chose. He could see through all the groans and the eye rolls, through all the comments about how he couldn't live outside the 1980s, the days when he should have been in high school like the rest of the kids his age. But he could see that look in her eye that told him she liked the songs he played and was content to let him choose the music when she was in the mood for them.

It had actually been a while since he'd done paperwork by himself, he realized. He didn't have Natasha's restless feet tapping against the floor, the sounds of her pen lightly whacking the desk as she tried to remember a date. He had to deal with all these papers by himself, and she wasn't even there to play some of her music, music he also pretended to hate but secretly enjoyed.

Somehow, as time passed, he managed to get lost in the rhythm of skimming, writing, and recalling dates. Every now and then he had to stop and look up a certain procedure or protocol, names of certain agents, so on and so forth, but he hit a rhythm, and he flowed with it. He could usually get caught up with it after a while, but he usually had Natasha with him to encourage his rhythm with her own.

"Barton. Hey."

Clint looked up and saw Maria Hill stalking into the room. "Hey yourself. Back so soon?"

"Yeah. Where's Cap?"

"Gone. He had one of his special trips." Clint smirked and shot her a knowing look. "Nat and Birdman went with him."

"Still not giving that nickname up, huh?" Maria's face melted into amusement, an expression she rarely wore but one that suited her whenever she did let it come out.

"Nope. I'm the original bird. The one and only," he quipped.

"I do recall you getting pissy anytime someone made a bird joke, and I do believe you've been doing that ever since you were recruited into SHIELD." Maria sat down in Natasha's chair without being invited, and she smirked at Clint while he gave a half-shrug, rolling his eyes as he did.

"So I'm sensitive. Sue me," he drawled. "What were you and Fury off doing? Don't give me that look. Nothing's classified anymore."

"Everything's classified," Maria corrected with a look in his direction. "We might run things differently here because we're Avengers, but there are a lot of other small SHIELD teams who still run by the old protocols. They're still SHIELD."

"Oh, come on, Hill," Clint snorted, his expression now turning sarcastic and slightly bitter. "Is any of us SHIELD anymore? It's been a year since SHIELD fell. A year for HYDRA to run crazy all over the entire planet. Hell, they're probably up somewhere in a space shuttle for all we know, too. They could be wreaking havoc on the goddamn galaxy, but we're not SHIELD. Not anymore."

"We're trying to keep some semblance of SHIELD then," Maria said in an attempt to compromise. Now she looked tired. She looked like she'd been running herself ragged, which quite honestly, was what she'd been doing for months. Clint knew more than anyone else just how much she did for SHIELD, the Avengers, whatever the hell they all were anymore. She wasn't Fury's right hand woman because her hair looked nice in a bun—she was in a position of power because she'd earned it. All of her hard work throughout the years hadn't been wasted, and Clint had watched her rise to the very top.

"Alright. Some semblance of SHIELD. You talking about that sad little team Coulson has going?" He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice this time. When Maria's sharp blue eyes met his, he didn't look away.

"You're still mad no one told you he's alive?" she asked. "Come on, Clint. You know SHIELD. You know we can't just tell people classified information based on sentimental connections."

"Oh, please. I'm not mad about that," he said, giving another offhand shrug. "I'm not. I'm just confused as hell about what they're doing. You won't give me any information on it, and some people Nat and I both know and care about are out there dealing with that shit."

"It's being handled." Maria's face lost any softness it'd had before, and she went straight back to her cool, professional gaze. "I actually didn't come here to talk to you about Coulson's team, what SHIELD is these days, or anything else you're set on arguing about."

Clint's eyes flared, and he went to snap back at her that he wasn't arguing, but he stopped himself before the words went to his mouth. Avengers didn't have much these days, and even if they didn't always like each other, they sure as hell needed each other. And even though he didn't want to admit that he needed Maria, he was forced to. "So enlighten me then. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

"Natasha skipped her psych eval."

Maria's words hit Clint harder than if she'd actually thrown a punch and hit him off guard. He blinked once and then twice, and then he frowned. That couldn't be right, he thought to himself. Maria couldn't be right. Natasha never missed her post-mission psych evals. Even when she'd gone through missions that had fucked her up to where she could barely go through debriefing, she'd gone to her psych evals. She always went. No matter what. Whether she knew she was going to fail them or pass them, she went because that was what agents were supposed to do.

"What?" he asked incredulously. "No…no, Nat wouldn't do that."

"I was surprised, too, when I saw it," Maria allowed herself to admit. "But she did. Everyone else went except for her. Even Wanda Maximoff went to hers."

"But—but Nat's never skipped a psych eval. Are you sure that's right?" Clint asked, but he already knew the answer. Maria wouldn't have come to him if she weren't sure. She was nothing if not thorough, and he knew she never would have dreamed of sitting there in Natasha's chair while she told him this bit of news unless she was sure.

"I'm sure," she responded, her voice steady and patient.

"Well, why are you coming to me?" Clint frowned and twisted his mouth slightly to the side as he studied the commander. "Isn't this some kind of breach of patient-doctor confidentiality?"

"I'm coming to you because I'm going to pull her off all assignments until she gets her psych eval taken care of," Maria coolly answered.

" _What?_ " Clint leaned forward now, hanging to Maria's every word. "You—you're just going to pull her off assignments? Just like that?"

"Clint, that's what we'd do for any other agent, and you know that. And don't give me another lecture about how we're Avengers and not SHIELD agents anymore. I know that. I do. But if Natasha's skipping her psych eval, what do you think that means? She's never skipped it before. She always goes, no matter how messed up she's been after a mission. Why would she skip _this_ psych eval?" Maria stressed. Her eyes stared straight into Clint's, and he wanted to look away. He knew what Maria was after—he knew she saw it directly in his face, and he desperately wanted to turn his eyes away from her so she couldn't see it anymore. But he couldn't.

"It's just not like her," he mumbled, and he shook his head. "It's not."

"If she purposefully missed it, something's going on with her, and until she lets us help her, I'm pulling her off all assignments. It's a miracle I'm not calling Rogers right now and demanding him bring her back here," Maria said. Her voice was still serious, but there was a slight hint at a joke in it in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood just a little bit.

He glanced at her without changing his expression. "So why are you coming to me about this? Like I said, you're probably violating some kind of patient-doctor confidentiality just by telling me this shit."

If Maria were annoyed by Clint's sharp words, she didn't show it. Instead, she leaned forward, still looking him directly in the eye. "If anyone knows her, it's you."

"If you're going to pull some bullshit and ask me to watch her the way you had her watch me after the Battle of New York, no. I'm not doing it."

"Clint." Maria rarely used his name. She had always called him Barton, Agent, or Agent Barton. But today she'd used his first name three times, so when she used it this last time, he closed his mouth, and he stared back at her. "I'm not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to talk to her when she gets back. I'm not…I didn't come here because I have ulterior motives, believe it or not. I'm still your friend. I'm still Natasha's friend. But I'm also a commander in whatever sad little organization we are now, and I have to make sure everyone's taken care. So I'm here today as Maria Hill, your friend. Not Commander Hill, your boss. Ok?"

Clint hid how chastised he felt, and he forced himself to look away. "Alright. Fine. I'll talk to her."

"Get her to come in. I don't want to suspend her. I don't want to pull her off missions. Between you and me…she's the best person we've got these days. If not the best, she's one of them, and that's disregarding her Avengers status. You and Nat have always been STRIKE Team: Delta for a reason, and she's half of it."

"I never thought I'd say this, but I miss those days," Clint admitted as he brought his gaze back to Maria's face. He didn't look so confrontational or angry, she realized. Now he just looked…confused. He looked confused and maybe even a little bit sad, despite the sarcastic smile that worked its way across his mouth. "Miss how easy it used to be when Fury was director, Coulson was our handler, and Nat and I took out the bad guys whenever we had orders."

"I miss those days, too," Maria quietly admitted. "And yes…things were easier then. Surprisingly so. They were easier, not quite as messy, and…well." She sighed and gave him her own dry smile. "Then aliens dropped from the sky, and HYDRA came out of seemingly nowhere. And now things are complicated, and we can't go back to how they were."

"No, we can't," he agreed. "Well. Thank you for stopping by. I will pass along your concerns to Natasha without letting her know they're from you."

"Good. Well. Looks like we have a hacker in our system that I need to go look into. Damn hackers never seem to give us a break." Maria stood up to go, but she lingered by Natasha's desk a little longer. "I'm honestly not trying to monitor anyone, Barton. In case you couldn't tell from the robot invasion we just had, the world needs the Avengers. The world needs Natasha."

Clint nodded to show he understood, and then as Maria leaves, one thought passes through his mind.

 _It's not just the world_.

* * *

"Honey, I was _trained_ to fly. I was _born_ to fly. This is where my area of expertise lies," Sam said as Natasha rolled her eyes for what felt like the millionth time that flight. "You think you're a better pilot than me? I was born to be in the air."

"Oh, please. Just because you were born to have literal wings doesn't mean that I'm not just as good." Natasha shot him a look, and he laughed and shook his head. "What? Look. I'm doing just as good a job as you are."

"Yeah, you are," he agreed, his dark eyes skimming over how she was handling the controls. "You're a damn good pilot. But I'm going to need you to show me you're better."

A sly smile passed over her lips, and she grinned at him. "Let me take your wings for a spin, and we'll see about that."

"Hell no, Romanoff. Hell. No."

A flashing light on the control panel caught Natasha's eye, and she looked towards it. "Cap? We're reaching our destination. We'll be at Camp Lehigh shortly. Know the good places to land?"

"I have an idea of where to go, but times change," Steve drily responded as he came up to her shoulder to peer at the controls. "If you keep going North but turn a little Northwest, you'll find a big open field where you can land this thing."

"This thing is a quinjet, and she deserves your respect, living legend," Sam interjected. Steve grinned, and he shook his head.

"Just see about landing us safely, ok?"

"Roger that, Captain," Natasha smartly replied. "Keep going North but a little Northwest. Got it. Sure you can handle that, Sam?"

"Sweetheart, I can handle it in my sleep."

"If you call me one more endearment…"

"What? What are you gonna do?"

"Is that the field Cap was talking about?"

"Think so. Ready to land this bird?"

"Not a bird. She's a quinjet, and she deserves your respect."

"Hilarious. So funny I forgot to laugh."

"Just help me land this thing."

Natasha smiled as Sam bent the controls the exact way he was supposed to in order to help with a smooth landing. It had been a while since she'd been able to banter with someone like this, to joke around and shoot the shit and just have fun. It wasn't that she didn't have fun with Clint—God, did she have fun with him. He was probably one of the funniest people she knew, but sometimes it was nice to have someone else tease her and laugh with her. It was just nice to finally smile after everything she and the rest of the team had experienced recently.

"Leave your guns here," Steve ordered as the quinjet came to a smooth, gentle landing in the field. Natasha noticed the way Sam didn't even bother to argue it. She figured by now he'd been on enough search-and-rescue missions for Barnes that he knew the rule of no guns by now, at least enough not to argue. Even though Natasha had accompanied on some of those missions, she hadn't been on nearly as many as Sam. While she'd still been trying to help make things right with SHIELD and HYDRA, Sam had been the one helping Steve try to track down Barnes. At this point, Natasha thought it was a wild goose chase, but she didn't say so. She knew Steve wanted to find Barnes, to find this one link to his past. She knew Steve wanted to find this person he cared about, and she couldn't blame him. If she were in his position, she'd want to, as well.

"Keep the quinjet running?" Natasha asked.

"No. If Bucky sees it, there's a chance he could use it for his own escape," Steve replied.

"But it'll be faster if I keep it running," Natasha countered. Steve opened his mouth to respond, but Sam shrugged.

"I can stay," he offered. "I'll keep the jet running, and you can go with Steve. There isn't a need for all three of us to go, right?"

Steve processed Sam's offer, and he tightened his jaw a little bit. He looked back at Natasha. "You ok with that? Do you think we need three people?"

"Please, Rogers, you insult me," she said sweetly. "You and I can get the job done if worse comes to worst. Besides, I doubt Barnes'll still be here. You got that shot of him from early this morning? If he's trying to avoid running into anyone he knows, whether it's you or HYDRA, he won't stick around very long."

"But if he's here," Steve pushed. "If he's here, do you think we can handle it?"

She smirked and pressed the button to lower the doors. "Of course we can handle it."

"I'm in love with you!" Sam shouted as she walked off the quinjet, Steve right beside her. She smiled as she looked up into the starry night sky, her green eyes alert and precise. Behind her, the door rose back up, and it was just her and Steve facing the elements of Camp Lehigh all alone.

"Deja vouz yet?" Steve asked quietly.

"You know it," she returned. Silent as the night around them, they began to creep forward into the camp. Natasha had only been there once before, and she'd studied maps of the camp's layout, both from back when Steve had been there and the last layout it had had before it'd shut down, but she didn't think she could ever know this place better than Steve did. Camp Lehigh was where Steve had been trained, and in a way, it was where Captain America had been born. She wasn't nearly anywhere near as sentimental as Steve, at least not where she'd let anyone see, but she understood why his face was set with such determination, why his eyes were so hard and never lingered in one spot too long.

They both continued farther and farther into the camp. Natasha noticed that Steve didn't even pull his shield out. Her curiosity didn't last long, however, because she realized that Steve went on these missions not because he was hunting down bad guys—he went on these searches for Barnes because he was looking for a friend. While Natasha longed to feel the steady, firm handle of her Glock in her hand, she knew that this wasn't her mission.

"Nat." Steve's voice caught her attention, and she looked back towards him. His blue eyes fixated on a building off to her right, and he nodded at it, a sign for her to enter. "Check here."

Natasha leaned her ear against the closest door to see if she could hear anything inside. Her eyes met Steve's, and she shook her head no. She went to start to pick the lock, but Steve stepped forward. "I've got this."

She gave him a look, but she moved aside as he snapped the lock with his shield, much like he had the time before when they'd been there. "Old habits die hard, huh, Cap?"

He smirked but quietly entered the building, Natasha hot on his heels. "This is where Buck would have processed in."

"Yeah?" Natasha squinted through the darkness but couldn't see much. "They have lights back then?"

"Funny." He continued to move forward through the darkness, and Natasha kept all of her senses on alert. If anything happened, she needed to be ready. She'd been on too many missions where she'd let herself get just the slightest bit too comfortable, and she'd learned that she could never get too comfortable with a mission. She always had to be prepared. She always had to be ready, waiting.

As she moved farther into the darkness, she felt a strange pang back behind her eyes, and her heart jolted a bit. _No_ , she told herself. _No, you can't get one of those headaches here. Not now. Not here. No._

If she and Steve get through the entire camp in time, maybe the headache wouldn't get worse, she figured. Maybe if they were quick enough, she could still stay focused. But as she thought about the uncomfortable pain that would start to swell until she couldn't think, she missed the familiar sensation of eyes watching her vividly through the darkness.


	4. Flashes

**Shoutouts to kamarooka, Maite Sanchez, agentromanoffblackwidow, Zoeff, LittleeOne, Black Betty, and Guest for reviewing!**

 **I hope y'all haven't given up on me yet! With the lack of reviews and my delayed update this week (this time I actually have a good excuse-I just moved into a new house and haven't had wifi connected until now!), I hope you guys are still with me!**

 **Just as a heads up, there's a mild flashback sequence. Any lines that are spoken in Russian are bolded!**

 **Song of the chapter: "Smother" - Daughter.**

 **Please let me know what you think!**

 **Enjoy! =)**

* * *

Chapter 4

"We're not alone."

Natasha wasn't expecting those words to come from Steve's mouth, but suddenly, there they were, and he was shouting at her to duck. Without waiting for further explanation, she ducked and listened to the familiar sound of his shield whirling through the air as he chucked it towards whatever was in the building with them. She heard the sound of metal on metal and the sound of the shield being thrown again. The darkness was so thick around her that she couldn't quite see where the enemy was, but she had a general idea. She heard what sounded like punches being thrown, a few grunts, and she honed in on those sounds.

Her left hand grabbed one of her taser discs, and she threw it out in the direction of the sounds. Hopefully it wouldn't hit Steve. _Please don't hit Steve. Please don't hit Steve_ , she thought over and over, rolling into a standing position. She put her body in a defensive stance and waited as she heard the disc make contact with something. There was a sharp, strangled cry and an angry grunt. Suddenly, she heard a quick string of words in Russian, and she paused. Russian. It had to be the Winter Soldier—Barnes knew Russian. Barnes had spoken Russian before.

Out of nowhere, the dull pang in her head sharpened until she couldn't see, couldn't hear. All she felt was pain, and then she heard voices shouting. They were Russian voices, and she could tell that they were angry. She heard all kinds of angry voices yelling, but she couldn't figure out if they were angry at her or not. Why were there so many voices? Why were they so angry? Behind her eyes, she got a flash of someone's head jerking to the side in her hands, heard the crack of their spine snap. She heard more shouting and felt a hot fire lash across her back, her legs, her arms. She felt a deep, burning blaze in her torso where she couldn't even reach it to stop it.

And just like that, everything was gone.

She found herself sitting on the floor, her back against the wall and darkness in front of her eyes. In the distance, in the far off distance, she heard someone shout her name, but she couldn't breathe. Everything was too much. The vision might be gone, and the feelings might be gone, but all of this was too much, and she couldn't do anything. Even though she was so cold she was sure she'd freeze to death, sweat dripped down her face, and if she'd been paying attention, she could have found that her tactical suit clung to her wetly with her own sweat.

"Natasha! Natasha, look at me. Nat—Natasha."

There was a bright light in her eyes, and she tried looking towards it, but it hurt her eyes so much.

"C—Cl—C—" She choked out.

"Natasha—Nat—look at me. Look at me, Nat. Can you hear me? Natasha?"

Natasha couldn't respond, could only gasp and breathe frantically. "C—C—"

"Natasha, it's Steve. Steve Rogers. Breathe, Natasha. Nat, look at me. Look at my face."

Steve. Natasha managed to hear that name through the panic, and she looked up at him. Her face felt wet, but neither she nor Steve could tell if the dampness on her cheeks was from tears or sweat. Steve. Her green eyes landed on him, and she tried gasping in a breath of air, but all she got was a small inhale.

"Natasha, look at my face." His voice was gentler now, easier, and Natasha tried to process what he'd just said. Clint. Where was Clint? Out of everything, out of the darkness, the bright light, she couldn't find him, and she wanted him more than everything combined. Shakily, she reached up to her head with her hands. The full force of the headache was gone, but she still felt a dull pain behind her eyes, but it was the dull pain of a feeling fading. It was a gentle decrescendo as the force of it continued to fade. "Nat, come on. I'm going to put my arm around you, so I can help you up. Ok? Alright? I'm going to get you out of here."

Her whole body stiff, as if it didn't even belong to her, she let Steve put his arm around her waist and lift her up. In the back of her mind, she was able to register that they were moving. She saw a light through the darkness without understanding where it was coming from or why, but she knew that they were moving towards it and were trying to reach it. The mission had completely left Natasha's mind—all that was left was the memory, the memory of a life she'd left locked in the back of her brain until Wanda had released it all over again.

Her feet dragged across the ground until they couldn't, and Steve was half-carrying, half-dragging her the rest of the way to the quinjet. She knew they were back, but she couldn't make sense of it—she couldn't make sense of anything other than what had just happened. She looked up at Steve, her green eyes madly searching his face, and she tried to think of words to say to him, words to make him understand what had happened to her back there, but every time he looked at her to check in with her, she just saw concern and worry. _No,_ she thought. _No. Don't be worried. Don't…_

"Nat, drink this," Steve ordered. He held something out to her, and she took it from him blindly without asking what it was. She trusted him. She couldn't make her mouth move or her brain, but she trusted him. Briefly, she noticed a blanket around her shoulders, and then she was tired. God, she was tired. She couldn't remember when the adrenaline had left her body and when it had been replaced by this exhaustion. She was tired. So tired. She was asleep before she even took a sip of her drink.

* * *

"What the hell happened?" Sam asked, casting one last worried glance over his shoulder at Natasha's unconscious form while Steve took the co-pilot seat.

"He got away. He attacked me, but then Nat…something happened to Nat, and I let him go," Steve replied. Sam re-directed his gaze towards Steve, and he looked at him with a mild frown.

"But what happened to her?"

"Honestly? I don't know," Steve admitted, his voice frank. "I don't know. We were fine. She was acting perfectly normal, like Natasha on a mission. Then we got inside the building, and something happened, and she wasn't herself. By the time I realized something was wrong with her and let Bucky go, she was curled up on the floor with her back against the wall. Couldn't even speak to tell me what was wrong with her."

Sam glanced over his shoulder again to look at her, and he and Steve both eased the quinjet off the field. "We going after Barnes?"

"No. We're getting Nat back to HQ. Whatever happened to her will have rattled her up. She should be back with the rest of the team. Maybe it was too early to send her out. Too soon after what happened to her with all of that Ultron mess," Steve replied, making it clear that this was an order and not necessarily a matter open for discussion. Sam accepted it and began steering the quinjet with Steve's help back in the direction of HQ.

"I know something happened to her on the mission. You referenced something about the Maximoff girl doing something to you…the whole team. Is that what happened with Nat?" he asked.

"That's my guess." Steve fought the urge to look worriedly into the back where Natasha was sleeping. "I don't know. We all went through a lot with Ultron, but Natasha…she always hides everything so well."

"Super secret spy training," Sam said, and Steve nodded.

"Super secret spy training."

"What are you going to do about Barnes?"

"I guess just wait for the next lead. I could have gone after him…probably should have. But I couldn't leave Nat. And from what I know about Bucky, he would have been long gone by the time I'd gotten her safe and back here. He's probably all the way across the world now," Steve remarked, his tone dry and somewhat humorous.

"You going to radio in about Nat?"

"No. She'll be ok. She's shaky right now, but I've seen her go through tough stuff before. We both have. No sense getting everyone all worked up."

"Mainly Barton, right?"

"Mainly Barton."

"Sorry the mission was a bust."

"Wasn't a bust for me." Despite himself, Steve looked back at Natasha, at the small figure curled up beneath a blanket with the bottle of water he'd given her lying flat beside her. "I came out pretty ok."

* * *

" **Pli** **é, Natalia. Keep your toes over your knees, and for the love of God, stop rolling your ankles in. Your body is one straight line made up of many lines."**

" **Keep your toes over your knees when you land, Natalia. It absorbs the shock better before you go into the roll. Your mission should be like a line—directly from you to your target."**

" **One quick snap of the head, Natalia. Quick and easy just like that. Spotting keeps you from getting dizzy.** "

" **All it takes to break a neck is one quick snap of the head, Natalia. Quick and easy, and you're done.** "

Faces blurred in and out of Natasha's dreams. Were these even dreams, she asked herself. This odd mixture of memory and nightmare was too much for her, and she couldn't even find a way to describe it. All she knew was that she remembered more about her past than she'd ever remembered outside of hypnosis, outside of someone else's guided help. She remembered the smell of resin on her pointe shoes, the feeling of her tights as they stuck to her sore toes as the wet blood from her feet formed a glue inside her tights…she could remember being a dancer. But she could also remember the Red Room in its entirety. She remembered the faces of the girls she'd trained beside, the faces of the girls she'd defeated. She even remembered the faces of the girls who had almost defeated her.

Almost.

And yet despite all of these memories, both false and real, Natasha felt pain. It started low in her belly and spread down to her legs, up through her torso. She felt so much pain she couldn't understand how she'd been able to manage it in the first place, but then she knew why she'd been forced to forget it—the pain had been too much. The pain of the graduation ceremony was always too much, and so the Red Room had hidden it deep within her mind so that no one could touch it.

" **You leap so gracefully, Natalia. You were born to fly.** "

" **You perform so beautifully, Natalia. You never disappoint. You were born to be a Black Widow.** "

Suddenly, Clint's face flashed past her unconscious eyes. Clint, on his knees and bleeding in Russia. Clint, looking up with her and shouting something to her. She clearly saw the gun in her hand, trained at his head; she heard the familiar voice in her ear of her old handler telling her to shoot Clint.

"I trust you," Clint had said. "I trust you."

Clint's eyes, his face, his voice. Natasha saw him. She saw him, and she heard him, and she felt him. But there was pain. There was so much pain, and she didn't understand why because memories of Clint weren't supposed to bring pain. Out of everything Clint Barton had brought into her life, pain was the last thing. But why was she feeling pain? Why was she remembering pain? Hell, she thought to herself, knowing she was shouting out to the void of her unconscious self, knowing all the while that she wouldn't remember her own thoughts when she woke up—hell, why was she remembering at all?

" **You were born to be a Black Widow.** "

"I trust you."

* * *

Clint finished towel drying his hair, and he tossed the towel onto the floor, pausing he watched Noelle the cat stare at it. "What are you staring at? Huh? You've had an attitude all evening, and I have no idea where you're taking it out on me."

Noelle stared back at him with her judgmental eyes, and Clint sighed. He was talking to a cat who didn't really seem all that interested in listening to what he had to say. And yet he was going to keep talking to her. "You miss Mom? I know. I miss her, too. But she'll be back. She had to go do some grown up stuff. Want dinner? I can get you dinner. Food? You want food?"

At the mention of food, the small cat meowed and ran off to the kitchen, knowing Clint would follow her. Shaking his head, Clint snorted and walked out behind her. "Yeah. That's what I thought. Say food, and you get all excited. Annoying little asshole. Don't tell Mom I called you an asshole. I didn't mean it."

It was by pure chance that Clint walked into the kitchen where he'd last left his phone because he wouldn't have heard it ringing otherwise. He took a moment to turn up the volume on his hearing aids and check the Caller ID. When he saw Rogers flash across the screen, he took another moment and frowned. Steve was calling him, which wasn't all _that_ out of place, but Steve was supposed to be out on a mission with Natasha. It wasn't out of character for Natasha to use Steve's phone to call him if her phone had died, but between calling and texting, Natasha was a fan of texting, especially since she knew Clint struggled on the phone with his hearing.

"Barton," he said, putting the phone up to his ear and answering in his clipped agent voice, the voice he used when he was Hawkeye.

"It's Rogers. We need you at HQ."

"Do I need my tactical suit?"

"Leave it. Your civvies should be fine."

"You do know that it's close to midnight, right?"

"The night's young."

"Give me a hint at least so I'll know why I'm being dragged out of my nice clean apartment at close to midnight."

"Natasha."

Clint stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes glued to the large clock on the wall by the fridge straight in front of him. "I'll be there in 10."

* * *

True to his word, Clint was at HQ in 10 minutes. The new apartment wasn't that far from Headquarters; both he and Natasha had discussed the pros and cons of having an apartment in close proximity to their place of work. Being close meant sleeping later and a shorter commute. However, being close also meant that they were close to their work. At first, Natasha had been the one to protest being so close—out of everywhere in the world they could have lived, why choose to live 10 minutes closer to work than that nice apartment a little farther out? Why did they want to be so wrapped up in their work, she'd asked. But it had hit her one day during a mission that her work was her life. Putting five extra miles or even 500 miles wouldn't be able to separate her work life from her home life. That was just fact, and so she'd finally agreed to take the apartment Clint had wanted.

As Clint stalked through the doors, his back straight and tall, his stride even, clean, he betrayed nothing of what he felt inside. Anyone looking at him couldn't have been able to notice the concern bubbling in his chest, the worry making his stomach turn. No one could had detected it. Just by looking at Clint, anyone would have thought that he was there for another day of training. But inside, Clint couldn't get there fast enough. Steve had said to meet him in the Infirmary, which meant that Natasha was injured. Natasha couldn't be dead, Clint figured, because Steve would have been much more urgent. But Natasha couldn't have gotten simply another broken bone. After everything they'd both been through in their lives, another broken bone was just laughable.

The archer made his way to the Infirmary without looking at or acknowledging anyone else around him. He had only one thing on his mind, and it wasn't whether or not the junior agents who'd been assigned filing jobs for the Avengers thought that Hawkeye was nice to them or not. Natasha, he thought. Natasha.

He saw Steve before Steve saw him, but the second that the captain saw Clint approach, he began striding towards him. "Barton."

"What happened?" Clint asked, his voice not betraying him. He wanted to know how she was, but he needed to know what had happened first. If Steve said she wasn't ok, he wasn't sure he could handle it without some kind of warning first, and asking what had happened to her was enough of a warning for him to prepare himself. His blue eyes scanned over Steve's face for any sign of lying or trying to go easy on him.

"Honestly, I'm still trying to figure that out myself," Steve replied without hesitation. "We found Barnes on Camp Lehigh, but when we tried to engage, I'm guessing she panicked. I found her curled up on the floor shaking and seemingly unresponsive."

Clint frowned, trying to process the second most un-Natasha-like statement he'd received that day. "Panicked?"

"I think so." Steve glanced over Clint's shoulder as if he were waiting for someone, and then he looked back at him. "I don't know. She was fine, and then she wasn't. She wasn't injured, though, and she's awake. Doctors took her vitals, and she appears to be ok."

"Wait." Clint folded his arms over his chest and stared harder at Steve. "I've never known Nat to panic during a mission like that. You said she was curled up on the floor shaking?"

"She wasn't fetal positioning if that's what you're asking, but she had her back against the wall and didn't really respond to any questions. In fact, she hasn't said a word since we brought her back here," Steve answered. Clint was quiet for a few seconds, and he tried to understand what exactly Steve had just told him. Earlier that day, Maria had brought him new about Natasha's psych eval skip, and now Steve had dropped this bomb on him, too.

Clint had been worried about Natasha since everything with Ultron had happened. He'd been worried about her the second Wanda had messed with her mind, and he'd been worried about her since he'd brought up the suggestion of taking people to the farm in Iowa. He was used to worrying about her well being on a day to day basis, but this kind of worrying was different. For once, he'd actually felt concern for Natasha in a way that went beyond all the other types of concern he'd shown her. Wanda had picked at the seams, and now Natasha seemed to be unraveling a little more quickly than anyone had been able to pick up on. And he hated himself for not having said anything sooner.

"Jesus," Clint mumbles.

"I was just in there with her, but she wasn't really talking to me," Steve offered. "I don't think I'm the person she wants to see right now."

Clint came back to Earth, and he stared at Steve one last time. "Thanks. For bringing her back. For taking care of her."

Steve shrugged and shook his head at the same time, his face unapologetic. "She's a good teammate, but she's an even better friend, Barton."

Lifting a hand, Clint dragged it over his face, the first sign of worry starting to physically appear in his body. "Yeah…yeah, she is." He paused for a second now that he knew Natasha was technically ok, now that he knew she wasn't going to die. "So you found Barnes? Did you manage to take him into custody?"

Steve pressed his lips together and shook his head. "No. We engaged, and he engaged back, but…guess there's always next time."

"Yeah…" Clint's voice trailed off, again thinking about the implications of Steve's words. "Next time."

"I can take you to Natasha's room. She probably wants to see you. Out of everyone in the world, I think you'd be the one person she'd feel happiest about seeing," Steve offered. He expected Clint to pass over everything in his statement aside from the offer to go see Natasha, but Clint looked at him, his eyes conveying that he'd heard what Steve had told him, and he'd actually listened.

"Yeah…yeah, I want to see her."

Without saying anything else, Steve turned and started down the hall. Clint walked directly by his side, his heart pounding and his mind turning over and over with all kinds of thoughts and questions, and then he was at Natasha's door. He saw her red hair first—he always focused on what part of her he saw first in situations like these. Sometimes it was her eyes, but most of the time, he caught sight of her hair first. Always with that bright red hair.

Her gaze was fixed in front of her, as if she were looking at something but staring straight through it. In a way, she reminded him of how she'd looked when he'd discovered her post-Wanda. She wasn't there with him, but she seemed to be somewhat aware of what was going on around her. Clint took it as a good sign that she didn't have restraints on—she at least knew she was somewhere safe, somewhere she didn't feel the need to fight the people trying to help her for fear of them being enemies.

Even though Clint's first instinct was to dash towards her side, he waited until she noticed him. He stood in the doorway, and he held his breath, and he made sure to take up more space than he usually did so he could catch her eye. And he did. When she looked over at him, her green eyes were large and confused, but she saw him. He knew that much.

"Nat," he said softly. He didn't know that in her head, she could still hear him telling her he trusted her when she'd been given the choice of killing him or being killed herself. He didn't know that that was all she'd been able to focus on every time she'd thought about him since she'd woken up. He only saw Natasha, looking more exhausted and sick than he'd seen her look in a long time.

"Clint," she said back, her voice every bit as soft. "Clint."

All it took was one word, and Clint was at her side. One word, and he was there beside her without either of them needing to say anything else. Clint knew she'd talk when she wanted to; he knew she'd tell him about what had happened to her when she'd reached some level of being ok again, and at that moment, she wasn't very ok. Not at all. So he could wait. He could wait, and he conveyed that in the way he grabbed her hand and looked down at her, silent and steady as he always was.

As Steve stood in the doorway and watched this, he knew that this was his cue to leave. Neither Natasha nor Clint seemed to be all that aware of the fact that he was still there, and honestly, Steve was all right with that. This reunion was for them, and he was intruding. Silently, he backed away and shut the door behind him. There were papers to fill out now, and he had to take care of them. Starting down the hall, he thought about all the accident reports Natasha had made so many copies of earlier. Ironic, he noted, that now he would have to fill one out about her.

And then suddenly, without any warning at all, it hit him. What Natasha had been trying to say when he'd tried to get through to her back at Camp Lehigh, when she'd retreated to some place in her mind that only she could access. He knew.

Natasha had been trying to say Clint's name.


	5. Lies

**Shoutouts to everyone who reviewed! I tried looking back to do my usual individual ones, but it's a bit difficult to tell who reviewed when, so I'm just going to do a blanket thank you right now!**

 **Thanks for being so patient, too. I know I've been awful about updating, and I'm honestly not sure when I'll update again, but just know I'm working on it! I'm trying to finish up my senior year of college, so we'll see how that goes as far as updating =)**

 **For extra emotions, listen to: "Ghost (Acoustic" - Halsey. I'm pretty into Halsey these days, so expect more of that!**

 **As always, please feel free to leave feedback (if you guys are still here, that is!) because I love getting it!**

 **Enjoy! =)**

* * *

Chapter 5

For an hour, Clint sat beside Natasha in complete silence. He didn't ask her questions, lecture her about being careful, or shower her with concerned words of love. He was just silent. And out of everything he could have been towards her at that time, Clint sitting beside her with no words coming out of his mouth was exactly what Natasha needed. She just needed this. She needed silence.

He didn't even touch her, either. He didn't try to hold her hand or stroke her hair. Instead, he remained professional about the whole thing, another thing Natasha appreciated. She knew she'd have to talk to him about what had happened at some point, but for now, she just wanted to sit still and have him near.

Finally, after a couple of hours of silence and an IV line stuck in her arm, Natasha moved. Clint's eyes remained glued to her as she slowly sat up and pushed the thin hospital blanket off of her. He wanted to speak, wanted to ask her what she wanted to do—what she wanted _him_ to do, but he just sat in silence and read his partner's body language instead. After everything she'd gone through in her head on this mission, she would communicate better through movements than words.

Still silent, without making a single sound, Natasha put her feet on the ground and started to stand. The look on her face told Clint she wasn't very sure of herself, and he was tempted to reach out to her, but he didn't. She wasn't quite at the point where she needed his help just yet, and he wouldn't give if it she didn't need it. He knew her better than that.

"Let's go," Natasha said once she'd realized she was steady on her feet. Clint looked at her, his face emotionless.

"Hmm?" he asked.

"I'm ready to go," she said, taking a step towards the door. There was something tight in her muscles that let him know she was antsy, but there was also an exhaustion weighing down on her that didn't let her go quite as tight as she normally would have. Pausing, Natasha looked at him. "I'm ready to go home now."

"You sure about that?" he asked carefully. His eyes scanned over her, assessing her physically. Steve had assured him she'd been fine physically—she'd barely been in the fight at all—and Clint was checking her more out of habit than anything else, but he couldn't help needing that extra bit of reassurance.

"Yeah. I'm tired."

Clint couldn't argue with that, and he stood up, too. "Shouldn't we get you checked out first? See about your discharge papers?"

At that, Natasha just gave him a look, and she started towards the door. Like always, Clint knew better than to do anything but follow, and so he walked out the door with her. Natasha gave him a quick glance, her eyes scanning over him to do her own onceover on him, her own physical check in to make sure he was ok even though she'd been the one with the mission, and then she kept walking.

"If Steve sees me, he'll insist I stay," she remarked, her voice quiet. "I'm just tired."

"Well, we _are_ spies," Clint said back to her, and when she looked up at him, she found him fighting back a wry smile. "We can bust out of anywhere without getting detected."

"You park outside?" she asked, checking their surroundings as they walked.

"Yep. Brought the car. Got it out front."

"Perfect." She walked beside him, stalking down the halls as if she owned the place, as if she knew that that was where she was supposed to be. Both of them knew that she should still be in bed, and both of them knew they still had things to take care of before they left, but Clint wasn't about to argue with her, and she knew it.

They made their way out to the car, barely pausing while Clint pulled out his keys and unlocked the car for them. Natasha, trusting him, walked to the passenger's side and got in. Every other day of the week, she didn't mind driving, but today, she knew it was best to just let Clint drive, so she slid into the seat and leaned back against the warm fabric of the seats while Clint started the car.

"Wouldn't be our first breakout of a hospital, hmm?" he asked her. A small smile tugged at Natasha's mouth, and she shook her head.

"It wouldn't."

"Kind of reminds me of Heidelberg."

"When we had the weapons dealers mission?"

"That's the one. I got shot in the thigh, and before we could stop the citizens from jumping in and calling for help, I was in the hospital, and you were already planning our escape route."

"Those were the days," Natasha replied, her voice sounding a little distant. Clint knew something was up with her, but he didn't ask. He couldn't. Not now. Now when Natasha was like this. So he did the next best thing. He drove home.

* * *

As soon as Natasha walked through the doorway of the small apartment, she felt her body release tension. Her shoulders dropped, and her cheeks loosened, the muscles in the small of her back slowly letting go of everything they'd been using to hold her together during the past few hours. Even though the apartment was still relatively new, and even though she'd lived in nicer places, this small space of theirs felt like _theirs_. She caught the dark, square shapes of unpacked boxes still in the corner of the dining room, and for whatever reason, she found another small smile making its way over her mouth.

"Meow," Noelle announced, trotting into the room.

"Noelle! Hi, kitty cat!" Natasha greeted as she knelt down to pet the cat and pick her up. "There you are. Was Clint good to you while I was gone? Hmm?"

"I was very good to her," Clint said with a mild snort as he locked the door behind the both of them. Natasha gave the cat a quick kiss and scratched behind her ears while Clint set the alarm system on their apartment. "Wasn't I, Noelle?"

"Could you get me a glass of water?" Natasha asked, still scratching Noelle's head.

Clint paused, and he gave her a hard look, as if he were trying to figure her out. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Of course."

"Thanks," she said, and she watched him go off into the kitchen. She looked down at the cat and watched the small eyes close while she pet her. Clint would never let her live down how much she loved this cat, and she knew that to be a true fact. "You miss me? I missed you."

"She did." Clint appeared with a glass in his hand. Natasha crossed towards him and set the cat down before taking the glass full of clear, cold water from him.

"Thanks," she said again, and she took a small sip. For a few moments, neither one of them said anything. The air was heavy with things that _needed_ to be said, and yet neither one spoke. Slowly, Natasha folded her arms over her chest, and she took another swallow. "You want to know what happened."

Clint blinked, wondering how in the world it was that he knew her so well and yet could still be surprised by her direct bluntness in moments like this. "Well…yeah. But you don't have to tell me now if you don't want to."

"I do," she said without pausing. "I need to tell you now."

"Alright. If you want to, I'll…I'll listen. You know I will."

Her face took on a peculiar look, but she nodded. "I do."

The expression was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and she looked down into her glass as another silence passed between the two of them. In her head, she had all the words she needed to say. She could practically _feel_ the words in her throat, and yet she couldn't bring herself to say them just yet. How could she? It wasn't that she didn't trust Clint. God, out of everyone she knew, she trusted him the most. It didn't matter whether or not they were team partners, STRIKE Team: Delta, Avengers, or just Clint and Natasha. She trusted him with her entire life. But she still couldn't speak.

Quietly, she cleared her throat. "There isn't really a point in lying to you. I think after all our time together…we know how that turns out."

"Which time do you want to reference?" Clint asked in an attempt to joke. She smiled just a bit for him, but she didn't pull her eyes out of her glass.

"I don't want to lie to you. I don't…it's part of my day job enough as it is, and I love you and respect you too much to start lying to you now," she said, her voice careful and slow. "When Wanda fucked with our heads that time on the ship in Wakanda…I saw the Red Room."

She knew that this small piece of information didn't come as a surprise to Clint, nor did she expect it to, but she just needed to tell him. She needed to say it explicitly so that there couldn't be any questions, any doubts about what she'd seen. Again, she cleared her throat, and she took a breath. "I saw…all kinds of things I'd done. I saw myself shooting people…training…and I saw my graduation ceremony."

"Nat," Clint murmured, his voice soft.

"I know you know," she said flatly. "You do."

"I…" he paused, but then he nodded. "I do."

"And there was the whole issue of my memory being erased. Voloshin was the one who got it back for me, but even then, after everything he did to help get it restored, I didn't remember _everything_. And I was ok with that. I was because even if I couldn't remember parts of my past, I at least had references for them. If I couldn't remember certain parts, I filled those parts in with information, and I was content with that being all I'd have to do." She paused and took a quick swallow of her water, looking up but over at the wall instead of him. "And whatever Wanda did to me gave me back everything. I remember every little piece I've had filled in with just words before. Now I have…I have pictures to go along. I know exactly what happened, when, and how it felt."

Suddenly, Clint felt sick to his stomach, and he looked at Natasha, trying to quell the wave of nausea he felt deep inside. "Natasha—"

"And I don't know why it is, but I can't forget it, and I think I'd honestly give anything to forget it all," she said quickly before he had the chance to speak. "So I don't know what exactly is going on, but I know that I'm remembering all kinds of things, things I've never remembered before, and I remember it all in each of my senses. It's like…it's like she didn't give me back my memory as it had been before, but she gave me an HD version of it, so I can't forget anything. I'm caught in this terrible, _terrible_ movie that vaguely resembles my life, and I _know_ it is, but it just seems too—"

She stopped talking and pressed her lips together, and she looked down at her hand, noticing how it shook. Hoping Clint didn't see it, she quickly brought it up to her glass and tightened her grip on it in hopes of getting the shaking to stop.

"You don't have to talk about this now," Clint said quietly, his face sincere as he looked at her. "You don't have to. I'm serious, Natasha. You can wait. Take a few days off work."

At that, Natasha finally met his eyes, and she shook her head fervently. "No. I'm not taking off."

"Nat, don't you think that'd be a good idea?" Clint asked as he frowned a little bit. "You went through a hell of an ordeal today, whatever it was that happened."

"I was hit with more memories. That's what happened," she said, snapping at him a little more than she'd intended. "I was all right, and then I was reliving what the Red Room had put in my head versus what _actually_ happened, and I just…I lost it. But I'm ok. And I can get back to work tomorrow."

"Natasha." Clint's voice was still gentle, but it was a little firmer this time. "Come on."

"I can't just stay home and feel sorry for myself," she said, shaking her head still. "I can't. I'll go crazy here. What am I supposed to do? Stare at the empty boxes? Wait until another memory hits me square in the face? I can't do that, Clint. I need to be at work—I _need_ to be able to get out into the field and work this out. I can do it. You know I've worked through worse."

"Ok, maybe physically yes," Clint said, his voice careful now. "But this is some serious shit, Nat. You can't just expect it to go away overnight. These are memories coming back to you, and they're not very good ones at that."

"I know. Which is why I need to work them out. I need to physically move them out," she said, as if she were explaining a very logical extraction plan to him. "That's how I work through my shit the best."

"I'm not sure Hill's ready for you to come back," Clint replied. He tried to make his tone as gentle as possible, but the look on Natasha's face was enough to make him feel like he'd physically hit her.

"What?" she asked, confused. "What do you mean Hill's not ready for me to come back?"

"She knows you skipped your psych eval."

And just like that, Natasha went still. Her whole body seemed to drain of energy, and all she could do was stand there and look at him. She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but when nothing came out, she closed it again. She stared at him for a few seconds, her mind racing and her heart hammering as she tried to think of how to get out of this one.

"I was going to go," she said, feeling a little lame as she said.

"Come on, Nat, what'd you just say—you learned the hard way not to lie to me?" Clint asked, showing frustration for the first time since she'd seen him after the mission. Natasha twisted her mouth to the side, and she narrowed her eyes as she stared hard at him.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked.

"I want you to tell me what's going on with you, and I want you to agree to listen that maybe staying home tomorrow would be good for you. Because if you go in tomorrow, I'd bet you $100 that Hill will bring you in for a meeting, whether it's disciplinary or the start of a psych eval, and then when she's done with you, she'll send you home," Clint said logically, his voice staying even, never once raising his voice.

"How'd you even know I skipped?"

"She came to me about it. Told me she was worried about you."

"Why?"

"Because she _is_ ," Clint said, and he let out a small sigh, lifting his hand and running it through his hair. The short blond tufts stuck up, and if Natasha weren't feeling this mix of emotions, she probably would have smiled and laughed and made some kind of comment about it. "It's as simple as that, Natasha. I promise. She's worried about you, and hell, since we have this whole no lying thing going on, I'll just go ahead and tell you that so am I."

"Well, I'm ok. You don't need to worry about me," she replied, frowning deeply. Suddenly, Clint's eyes flashed, and he took on a defensive position as he put his hands on his hips.

"Are you joking?" he asked. "I literally just mentioned how we don't have a lying thing, and you're telling me you aren't ok? After everything you just admitted to me about these aftereffects of your memory coming back?"

"Here's a crazy thought—have you ever considered that you don't know me better than I know myself?" she spat back. Anger burned deep down in her chest, and she didn't know why she was feeling it so intensely now, but she couldn't stop any of the words from spilling out of her mouth as she felt that anger churn inside her. "You think you know me, and ok, I'll give you that, but you don't know me _better_. You always say you trust me, but you can't seem to trust the fact that I'm all right. Because _you_ think you know the truth, _I'm_ the one who's wrong."

"Natasha, that's not—"

"Not what you meant?" She cut him off with a fierce gaze. "Is that what you were going to say? Because I think it's what you meant. And Clint, I'm aware of myself. I'm aware of what's going on with me. So yes, I know I skipped my psych eval. Yes, I have my reasons for it. No, I don't need you and Maria fucking Hill to lecture me about it."

"Natasha, I'm not trying to attack you," Clint said, but this time, his voice went quiet. He was quiet, and he stared at her with tired eyes. All the tension drained from his body, and he just looked exhausted and much older than he actually was. "I'm just worried. And skipping your psych eval isn't something you do. Nat…I know patterns. And as much as we're trained _not_ to have patterns, I know your patterns. I know mine. We're not doing our best right now."

Natasha's shoulders tensed, and she folded her arms protectively over her chest. "I know we're not. I never said I was perfect. I just said I'm ok."

"You know what?" Clint sighed and let his arms drop to his side. For a second, he stood in silence, and then he lifted a hand to run through his hair as he shook his head. "I don't think you're lying. I think you think you're ok. And if you want to get mad at me and yell at me about how I think you know better than you know yourself, ok, but…I'm tired. We've been through hell and back these past few weeks. We lost a teammate, you're training a girl who fucked your head up, and now whatever happened to you on your mission decided to rear its ugly head. If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. But I think we know at some point, we've got to stop lying. 'Member when I lost my hearing? How you let me wallow in my own self-pity before you forced me to come to terms with what happened? I want to help you, Nat. God, I want to help you."

Natasha swallowed hard and looked away. She knew he was right. Far in the back of her mind, she knew Clint was right, but she didn't want to admit it. She wasn't trying to fool herself in why she'd skipped her psych evaluation. If she'd gone, she would have been marked as incapable of field performance, and she couldn't resign herself to that. Not now. She'd been through so much in the past, things that had made her willingly step off to the side to take time to recuperate, but not this. She couldn't let this one go.

"But I'm not lying," she said. In the silence that followed, the seconds seemed to take years to tick by. Clint blinked, his age piling into the lines of his face on the longer he stood there and looked at her.

"Yeah," he finally said, his voice tired far beyond the point of exhaustion. And as he turned to go the bedroom, he turned his head to the side, and he gave her a taste of her own medicine. "And I don't love you."

Even though Natasha knew he was lying, knew he was using that to make a point, she felt her throat swell up, and she turned away.

 _I'm sorry,_ she wanted to say.

 _I can't speak,_ she longed to tell him.

 _I remember, Clint,_ she thought to say, _I remember._


End file.
